After yesterday’s Mirror featured a portable television set from Ekco, today’s Express finds a similar new production, this time from Murphy. Cyril Aynsley writes that this model features a 12″ screen but weighs nor more than the Ekco set I mentioned yesterday and costs £10 less.
He’s also see a small 7″ long box called the Teleslot which is designed for use in milk bars, hotel bedrooms, station waiting rooms and the like. It operates like a kind of juke box in that you put two shillings in the slot and receive two shillings worth of television. How much television constitutes two shillings worth is not revealed.
The Mirror’s Clifford Davis brings the scoop that Gilbert Harding has agreed to rejoin What’s My Line when it returns in October. Harding, who had previously declared that he never wanted to do another panel show, said the BBC had been “decent and persuasive”.
With What’s My Line being controlled by Maurice Winnick, Davis had been expecting the series to jump over to one of the commercial channels but because host Eamonn Andrews and panellists David Nixon and Gilbert Harding are all unavailable the commercial stations weren’t interested.
The Times carries news of another purchase by Associated-Rediffusion. This time it’s an old brick-tower on Campden Hill in Kensington which was to be demolished but is now to undergo conversion into a receiving station for commercial television. The structure, which is owned by the Metropolitan Water Board, will be used as a receiving point for radio transmissions from remote units and pictures will be sent from there by telephone line to the studio in Kingsway and from there forward to the Croydon transmitter.
The Associated British Picture Corporation has registered a new private company, according to The Times. Associated British Cinemas (Television) Ltd will carry on the business of “makers, producers, distributors and exhibitors of television, sound, radio, cinematograph and stage plays and programmes &c”.
Tonight’s three main programmes on the BBC come from the National Radio Show. In Town Tonight starts the run at 7.30pm then, after the news, tonight’s Arenascope presentation is “Youth in Command” wherein the young show their skills, whatever they may be. Top of the bill, as it were, is The Howerd Crowd with Frankie Howerd and special guest Señor Wences. With a script by Eric Sykes and production by Ernest Maxin, this should be a treat.